Yesterday, a 70-year-old grandmother, Marie, was left without money for bills, food, or Christmas presents when her bank account was emptied by scammers claiming to be from BT.

She is normally very careful with her bank details, said Marie's granddaughter, Aimee, but these people used a story that sounded genuine to her as she was currently moving from BT to Talk Talk for her internet and so expected calls from both companies.

They convinced my Nan to give them remote access to her PC and asked for her bank details so they could process a refund, then they immediately emptied her bank account.

Marie's daughter, Karen, immediately contacted her mother's bank, Nationwide to try and reverse the transaction. Nationwide refused to do so claiming this was a legitimate transaction.

We like a lot of people, assumed Nationwide would just refund, said Karen, but because she gave her bank details to them, they are saying it was authorised, which is unbelievable.

Marie had been saving for a trip to Australia to see her mother whose health is declining. It was possibly the last time Marie would ever have been able to see her mother.

Marie's granddaughter, Aimee, is hoping that the public is more feeling than Nationwide. She has started a Just Giving campaign to try and raise funds to replace what her nan had lost and so give her back a happy Christmas.

My Nan is always helping others, writes Aimee. There will be many people reading this who know of her, and have maybe received help from her themselves.

Admittedly that's not the official line but it hard to see how else the figures can be interpreted.

A new BBC page, "How much of your area is built on?" shows that Thanet is heavily developed.

According to the page, Thanet has less than 1% of land in a natural state compared to the national average of 35%.

Likewise, 27% of Thanet is "built on" compared to less than 6% of the UK as a whole. To give that some perspective - before this value doubled twice, Thanet would be 100% buildings. Dover, by comparison, is only 8% built on. Canterbury 9% (with 16% of land still in a natural state).

The only comparable area for buildings is Medway (which contains Rochester and Gillingham) which is 28% built on but still with 10% natural land.

A writer based charity from Thanet has relaunched their website to cater for all creatives in Thanet.

After voting through a subtle name change from Thanet Creative Writers to Thanet Creative, the charity says we feel that the new name better encompasses the fact that we are a charity that cares about poets and other forms of creative expression too.

The new website, which is very similar to the old one is part of a social network for creative writers, poets, and authors.

In the past, they said, we've had a problem with mean people cyber-squatting names we should be using and trying to cause people to confuse them for us. We hope that this name change will end all that and clarify what we care about - being creative. No one has time for all this childish drama.

The new website, also called Thanet Creative, is free to sign up to and accept submissions from all members.

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Matthew Brown is standing as a Liberal Democrat candidate for Cliftonville.